It will come as no surprise to anyone who regularly shops in Qatar’s supermarkets to hear that over 90% of the food on the shelves is imported from abroad, making the country extremely vulnerable to price hikes, embargoes, and supply disruptions. Taking control of the food supply chain is known as ‘food security’, and it’s one of the most important challenges facing Qatar in the coming years.

That’s the view of Dr. Samsul Huda of the University of Western Sydney, Australia, who is head of a multidisciplinary international team examining how best to use Qatar’s resources to maximize domestic crop productivity within Qatar, but also looking at land purchasing and contract farming in resource-rich countries in temperate and tropical climates in Africa, Asia, and Australasia.

Hydrates are a big problem in the oil and gas processing industries. Hydrates are ice-like crystalline materials which use the unusual environment within a pipe (high pressure and low temperature) to form on the inside of the pipes used to carry hydrocarbons. They are usually composed of water molecules and ‘guest’ vapour, such as methane. These hydrate solids grow to such a size that they impede and ultimately block the flow of oil or LNG.

A group working at Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) and led by Dr. Ioannis Economou, has gone back to basics to try and solve this problem, by using computational molecular dynamics. Theoretical concepts are applied to various molecules and mixtures of molecules, then supercomputers predict how these molecules and mixtures may perform at various temperatures and pressures within a pipe.